


Sunlight on fresh snow

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 15:40:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the furthest north, she the furthest south. Ice and fire, sand and frost, snow and sun – together, they might bring peace to Westeros. Between them, Myrcella thinks, anything is possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunlight on fresh snow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: Robb/Myrcella. He was the Snow. She was the Sun. Together, they could be anything.
> 
> So this turned out to be a lot longer than planned, and not exactly what I had in mind when I started. Hope it fits the prompt at least a little bit, and hope that you enjoy :D
> 
> (Oh, and I kind of glossed over the Red Wedding – let's assume that they reached a peaceful, diplomatic solution, mmkay?)

Princess Myrcella Baratheon married Prince Trystane Martell when she was thirteen, birthed Prince Nymeros Martell when she was fourteen and lost her husband when she was fifteen.

Somewhere between Meros' birth and Trys' death, Myrcella realised that she hated the family that she'd been born into. They had sold her off without a thought for her own wishes, the one thing she knew her mother had loathed about her own marriage more than anything, worrying only about Joffrey as always.

She was not sorry that her older brother had died. She was sorry that Tommen had to take the throne, that he'd been made to marry Margaery Tyrell, that he had to put up with their mother and her madness, but Myrcella had felt a sick, guilty thrill on hearing of Joffrey's death. She had hated her vile brother most of all, and when Arianne told her that  _she_ should take the throne, not Tommen, it had made sense – Joffrey and Tommen had always gotten everything Myrcella wanted in life, and for once, she wanted her due.

She had never had their mother's love, their uncles' affection, their father's notice. It made perfect sense to her that she should take precedence over Tommen, sweet, soft Tommen. Even though she was only eleven when Arianne said it, even though she was only a year older than Tommen, she  _knew_ that she could be a better ruler than him.

But Prince Doran had a plan, and so Myrcella had been confined to the Water Gardens until her marriage to Trys. In those two years, she had been cut off from Arianne and the Sand Snakes, limited and watched in everything she did.

Still, she could not truly fault Prince Doran – she could understand why he so hated her family, why he so wanted Daenerys Targaryen on the Iron Throne. She just wondered if perhaps the people of the Seven Kingdoms might be more accepting of the Mother of Dragons if there was a woman keeping her throne warm for her.

Whispers came from the North, of the final remaining Stark, the King in the North, and his conquest of the West and the Vale, of his returning to the North and destroying House Greyjoy, of Lady Sansa being found and her marriage to Tyrion being annulled. Myrcella listened closely, waiting for the day that her mother died, and was disappointed when she was not executed for all the charges the Faith laid against her.

Not a single Lannister was present at her wedding, and Myrcella was relieved for it – she could not stand any member of her family besides Tommen, but she adored Trys' family, and it was Arianne who put her hand in Trys' and entrusted her to his protection.

Myrcella had known even then that she would be the one protecting Trys – he was the best friend she had ever had, kind and clever and witty and sweet, but he was not strong enough to truly defend his lioness from the crueller tongues at Sunspear, the ones that slandered her birth and her ruined face.

She slandered them right back, and Trys sat beside her with a quiet smile, so very like his father's, and held Meros in his arms.

It was a sweating sickness that took Trys in the end, the same sickness that took Prince Doran and swept north through all the kingdoms, stripping away vast tracts of armies and smallfolk and noblemen alike. Myrcella herself was abed with it for almost three weeks, delirious with fever, and she awoke to find her goodsister ruling Dorne, her husband already buried and her son named heir to Sunspear.

She mourned long for Trys – while their love had never been passionate, it had been deep and true, built on friendship and respect. It had given life to their son, sweet Meros who was the image of his father but for his eyes, his Lannister green eyes. Myrcella had never loved anyone or anything as much as she loved Meros, and she was quite sure that she would kill anyone who tried to harm her son.

When the official mourning period was over and she and Arianne retired to the Water Gardens for a short respite, bringing only Meros and a small contingent of guards and a few companions, Myrcella began to wonder what her role in Dorne was now. Before, she had been Prince Trystane's clever wife, the only thing preventing the Martells from rising against the Iron Throne when the man claiming to be Aegon Targaryen landed in the Stormlands.

Of course, just because they never  _publicly_ rose in support of the one they call the Mummer's Dragon does not mean that he went unaided. Many of the Dornishmen unofficially flocked to his standard, and Myrcella knew without being told that Prince Doran and Arianne were sending Aegon supplies and gold.

The war is in its fifth real year when word reaches Myrcella and Arianne at the Water Gardens of the demise of Jeyne Stark, Queen in the North, and her infant son Eddard. Suddenly, Myrcella thinks she might have a purpose once more.

She is well used to being a pawn on the board – being sold to Trys to keep the peace, almost dying at Darkstar's sword when Arianne tried to crown her, riding with Trys to the outlying bannermen to ensure them of Prince Doran's support and protection should they send their men to Aegon's army – and what she proposes to Arianne gives an excellent impression of remaining thus.

"You would have us declare openly for Aegon, and send you to treat with the King in the North?"

Arianne seems amused, as does Nym, who lounges beside her, nibbling on a blood orange. Myrcella sits in a patch of dappled sunshine, holding Meros in the water. Her son laughs and splashes, as happy as he always is when there is someone smiling at him.

"A Dornishman would draw unwanted attention north of the Marches," she says. "Dye my hair and I could be anyone-"

"Not with that scar of yours," Nym points out. "And your face is all Lannister, besides. How many people would mistake you for anyone but who you are, even with muddied hair?"

"Aegon needs allies," she argues, scooping Meros into her arms, laughing and kissing his dark, glossy hair when he grabs at her face. "He cannot fight three armies, and Robb Stark has never made a claim to the Iron Throne."

* * *

In the end, she regrets mentioning it, because she is given a choice – go and negotiate with the Starks, go make herself useful, or stay here with Meros.

Because Arianne will not let her heir leave Dorne.

"He is my son, Arianne, not yours!" Myrcella finds herself shouting in the grand hall of Sunspear, holding Meros against her, not caring that his little hands are tangled so tightly into her hair that it hurts. He is  _hers,_ the one thing in the world that she never had to share – she did not mind sharing him with Trys, because she loved Trys too, because Trys genuinely  _shared,_ did not try to take take take – and she hates that Arianne has the right to demand this of her.

"He is the heir to Dorne, and so he will remain in Dorne. You may remain with him, or you may treat with Robb Stark. The decision is yours."

There was no decision, of course, not when peace depended on Aegon winning the war, when Meros' safety depended on Tommen losing his throne and Stannis never sitting on it. If the price for her son's life is losing him to his aunt, Myrcella will pay it. She will wrap herself in a cloak emblazoned with sun and spear, red and orange and the vibrant gold of her hair, of her sun-kissed skin, and she will venture into the snowy wastes of the North to save the beautiful boy with Trys' face and her smile.

She only prayed that her plan would work, prayed to gods she did not think she believed in because they had taken her husband from her, her home and her safety. She prayed that she still held enough value to tempt a king, and that Robb Stark wanted peace as much as she did.

* * *

The crew of her ship, the  _Setting Sun,_ are wary and watchful as they sail up the coast to White Harbour.

The ship truly is hers, a gift to her and Trys from Prince Doran and Arianne following Meros' birth, during those halcyon days when she had passed the hours playing cyvasse and swimming and dancing with Trys, singing and talking and playing with Meros, planning the extensive trip they intended to make, a tour of all the Free Cities and further, possibly venturing even to Asshai. The sweating sickness had struck then, taking so many people from them – Trys, Doran, Obarra, dozens of others – and her plans had turned to dust, her joy to ruin, and now she was using her and Trys' freedom to bind herself to someone else. She was forced to choke down guilt whenever she thought of how Trys would have behaved in the wake of her death. Would he have travelled east to the Dragon Queen, offered her his hand, trying to succeed where Quentyn had failed? Or would he have paid her more respect than she had paid him, have stayed in Dorne and raised their son alone?

The sails are the orange of sunset, the shade of orange that Trys had liked best for her to wear, the colour of the heavy woollen cloak draped around her shoulders, the colour of the exquisite silken gown Arianne sent for her to wear upon being presented to the King in the North, holding court at Winterfell. Myrcella had always relished Trys' preference for her in orange and gold and green and pink, the escape it provided from the Lannister crimson and Baratheon black she had worn so often and hated so much.

By the time they dock at White Harbour, Myrcella misses Meros with a physical ache, misses Trys almost as much and misses the quiet and warmth of the Water Gardens nearly as much as she misses Trys. The Water Gardens were always  _theirs,_ the place they hid away from the world with Prince Doran, peace and laughter their companions.

The Manderlys make her welcome, provide her with every comfort they can, but she lingers only overnight before continuing on for Winterfell. She wraps herself in thick furs, russet and brown and some strange, thick pelt that almost matches her hair, and she keeps close to Alyso, her sworn shield, as they ride into the snow.

Winterfell is as imposing as she remembers, more so now that the snow is so deep and there is only a handful of approaches, tracks carved into the snow by the passing of many people. Doubtless the Northmen were all curious about the Dornish envoy. She wonders if any of them would expect their visitor to be the King on the Iron Throne's sister.

She does not think so.

* * *

Her face is wrapped in scarves, her hair hidden beneath her hood, when she rides into the courtyard. It has been cleared of snow, and the Starks – only Robb and Sansa remaining – are beautiful and cold, near as alike as Cersei and Jaime Lannister with their clear blue eyes, their high cheekbones, their expressions of guarded courtesy.

Myrcella remembers the childish infatuation she had developed for the King in the North when last she came to Winterfell, and she sees that age has only improved him. His beard is short, neat, just a tidy layer of auburn over the hard line of his jaw, around his full mouth. His hair, too, is short, but even cut close to his head the curl of it is discernible, and the pale sunlight breaking through the clouds catches on the red and gold there, for his hair is darker than Sansa's and the red is not immediately visible.

She lets Alyso help her dismount, and takes a moment to push down her hood and unwind her scarves before turning to greet Robb and Sansa. She can see the shock on their faces, the way their gazes flit to her scar and away and back again, but she curtsies low and her hair tumbles over her shoulders, thick and golden and heavy, and she knows that even if her face is ruined her hair is still strikingly beautiful.

_Trys loved to brush my hair for me,_ she thinks longingly, for the briefest of moments, and then it is gone, the grief replaced by a sense of purpose.  _I will save our son, Trys, I promise._

"Your Grace," she murmurs, keeping her eyes demurely lowered as she rises, smiling just slightly. She does not have to feign nervousness, because she knows how precarious her position here is, how dangerous it truly was of Arianne to agree to send her.

"Your Highness," Robb returns, masking his confusion and surprise as best he can. "We were not expecting you."

"I am a daughter of House Martell by marriage," she says lightly, shrugging under layers and layers of furs and cloaks. "My son is the heir to Sunspear. Princess Arianne agreed that I would be a suitable envoy – I hope I am not a disappointment?"

Sansa and Robb exchange a brief glance and then both smile, one as lovely as the other.

"Of course not, your highness," Sansa says, her voice as soft and gentle as Myrcella remembers. "Please, come this way – we have rooms prepared for you and your people."

Alyso refuses rooms of his own, and Myrcella has to bite her lip to stop herself from smiling when Sansa stutters over a courtesy at the announcement that Alyso and Lady Allyria are lovers. She had almost forgotten how different things are north of the Marches, how unmarried lovers are frowned upon.

While Allyria helps her wash and dry and style her hair, she thinks that however much a Tully Robb Stark might look, there is winter in his eyes, snow under the pale whiteness of his skin just as there is sunshine under the soft gold of her own.

* * *

When she arrives in the hall for her welcoming feast, Robb Stark stands to greet her.

He is everything Trys was not – ice and russet and noon where Trys was sand and sable and night, his shoulders and arms and chest thick with muscle under the velvet of his doublet. Trys was lean in his strength, lithe and elegant, and she never remembers him dressed in anything but the cool silks and linens they all wore.

Still, as different to Trys as the moon is to the sun though Robb Stark is, Myrcella cannot deny the thrill of arousal that sparks when his lips brush over her knuckles, the tight coil of  _want_ low in her stomach ( _no, lower, I'm so sorry, Trys)_  and she flushes pink as he lowers her into the seat at his right hand.

"I was sorry to hear about your wife and son, Your Grace," she says sincerely. She remembers meeting Jeyne Westerling years ago, as Princess Myrcella Baratheon. It seems like a different life, coloured by the fear of Joffrey and the hatred of the constraints enforced on her, but she remembers Jeyne as a pleasant, shy girl. "Lady Jeyne was very lovely."

His eyes flash with something that might be grief, and he smiles grimly. "You had your own misfortune recently, your highness – your husband was one of the first to succumb to the sickness, after all."

She is ashamed to feel tears stinging at the corners of her eyes – no one has dared mention Trys to her often since his death, and the grief is still raw.

"I was unwell myself when he died," she admits, swallowing hard to force away the thickness in her throat. "I was not able to be at his funeral. He was the best man I have ever known."

And it is true – she sincerely believes that there was never a better, kinder man than Trystane Martell. He was gentle and quiet and reserved, but he loved wholeheartedly and treated everyone with respect.

"I am sorry for your loss, then," he says gently, touching her hand with the very tips of his fingers. "Your son lives, though?"

There is nothing Myrcella likes so much as to talk about Meros, but she is careful now – she needs Robb Stark, and the last thing she wants to do is alienate him by bragging about her son when he has so recently lost his.

She tells him that Meros is named for his grandfather, Doran Nymeros, that he looks like his father but has her eyes and smile, that his aunts and cousins and, it seems, all of Sunspear, all of Dorne, dote on him. She tells him that she misses Meros, that she fears he will not remember her by the time she returns to Dorne, but she does not mention that she worries Arianne will replace her in her son's affections.

Both she and the Young Wolf drink too much, the Dornish strongwine she brought as a gift staining her lips red. When Alyso and Allyria begin to play music and her escort dances, she all but leaps across the table, spinning about the floor without a care for propriety. For a moment, she could be back in Dorne, dancing with her friends and waiting for Trys to come back from putting Meros to bed or speaking with his father.

The music shifts and changes when the Northmen take over, darkening and taking on a deeper, heavier beat, one that carries the song of winter just as the Dornish music carries the melody of summer. In that moment, that strange, queer moment where the two songs meet and melt together into something unearthly and weird, Myrcella longs for Trys as she has not since she and Arianne and Meros left Sunspear for the Water Gardens.

She finds herself in Robb Stark's arms then, and she knows that even with her scars they are the most beautiful couple in the room, sunshine and snow twining about one another, faster and faster as the pulsing rhythm of the music takes over, pushing them closer together and stealing the breath from their lungs, their propriety from their hands. His fingers are tight on the curve of her lower back, hers dig into his shoulder, and she thinks dizzily that she has never danced like this with anyone, not even Trys.

Eventually, they stumble off the floor almost unnoticed, and she thinks for one giddy moment that he will kiss her.

Instead, he entrusts her to Alyso's care and bids her goodnight.

* * *

The next day, the first day of their negotiations, all of them are muggy and short-tempered. Myrcella almost fights with three of the Northmen, and dinner that night is a subdued affair compared with the feast.

It is three days before she manages to bring up the primary of Arianne's demands, the point that will seal their alliance. Aegon visited at Sunspear and agreed to it himself, and while Myrcella is here as envoy plenipotentiary, speaking on Aegon and Arianne's behalf, with the ability to make decisions for them, this was the single inarguable demand they had made.

"King Aegon and Princess Arianne would seal the alliance with a marriage between House Stark and House Martell," she says at last, exhausted by the efforts of making herself heard among the Northmen, who have no respect for an ambassador who is not only a woman but also a Lannister by birth.

"How?" Robb demands, at least as tired as she is and in a mood twice as foul. More than once he has had to reprimand one of his bannermen for being too familiar with her, for attempting to take liberties, and she is sure that he will be glad to see the back of her. This makes her mission more difficult – or it would, if she was not certain that the King in the North was not as enthralled by her as she is by him. "My sister is bethroed already, and I am sure Princess Arianne has no intention of surrendering Sunspear to be my queen-"

"My goodsister is not the only princess of House Martell, Your Grace."

Every single man and woman around the table stares at her with wide eyes and open mouths as she lowers her head to hide her blush.

"Princess Arianne and King Aegon propose a match between you and I?" Robb asks, his voice faint with surprise.

Myrcella lifts her head, hurt by the undertone of something that she can't quite define but assumes is not good in his words, and meets his eyes fiercely. She is abruptly sick of the Northmen and their king, sick of everything about Winterfell, from the dark stone of the walls to the snow on the ground outside. She longs for sunshine and sand and pale stone and pink marble and Meros and Arianne and Nym and  _home,_ for Dorne and everyone who waits for her there, and she does not think she can bear another moment here in this frozen wasteland. She misses the feel of the sun on her skin, is sure that the sun-glow is leaching out of her face more with every moment she spends surrounded by ice and frost and bitter winds.

"I have proven my use as a breeding mare, so I will be able to provide an heir, if that is what worries you, Your Grace" she spits, rising to her feet and tossing her hair. "But if the prospect of a match with me disquiets you so, I suppose our talks are at an end."

She strides from the room then, all the pride of Houses Martell, Baratheon and Lannister pushing her shoulders back and her head high, and she holds steady until she reaches her rooms.

She is barely inside but someone is knocking, banging really, and she wrenches the door open-

Robb's mouth is hot on hers, his body strong and warm and big, so  _big,_ as he pushes her up against the door, slamming it shut with her back.

She gasps against his lips, too startled to do more, and he pushes his tongue past her open lips, tilting his head and kissing her deeper, harder, and she reacts without thinking, pushing back against him, clutching at that thick, curly hair, arching into him and twisting closer. She spares a thought for Trys,  _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry love,_ but kissing Trystane Martell never made her heart thump like this, never made her feel so dizzy she should have been sick but she isn't, she isn't, never made her so desperate for more, for the feel of skin under her fingers and fingers on her skin.

She tugs at his tunic, pushing it up, needing to touch the muscles that are hinted at under his clothes, needing to feel and taste the skin that she knows will be pale, milky white and cool under her hands in a way Trys' honey-toned flesh never was.

She marvels that even if she shut her eyes tight and didn't listen to the deep, feral growls ripping out of the depths of his chest, she would still know that this was not her husband from the smell of him alone – there is something sharp and earthy about his scent, stronger now that his chest is bare, something that whispers oddly of snow and ice and winter and the North, just as she imagines she must smell of sand and sunshine and summer and Dorne to him.

His tongue traces a line up the length of her throat just as he finally gets to her smallclothes under her skirts, and she clings to him as her knees buckle, her nails digging into his shoulder, his arm, and she makes a strange keening noise that she is sure she has never made before when his teeth catch on her collarbone and his fingers slide against her slick flesh.

"Want you," he snarls, shoving her smallclothes to the floor and giving her barely enough time to kick them aside before catching her behind the knees and hitching her legs up around his hips.

His skin is just as alien under her hands as she thought it would be, but she finds that she relishes the newness, the strangeness, and strives to touch every inch of him that she can reach while kissing him deep, hard, almost violently, tasting the expensive spices that she had brought as one of many gifts, that the cooks had used in the mulled wine, on his tongue, on the roof of his mouth.

His hips snap against hers, and she can feel how hard he is, and she doesn't think she's ever wanted anything as much as she wants Robb Stark, Lord of Winterfell and King in the North, to fuck her right there against the door. She tightens her legs around him, pulls him closer and makes that noise again, and he pulls down her gown and  _attacks_ her breasts with his mouth, tongue and lips and the sharp scrape of teeth pushing her closer, closer, and when his lips shape themselves around her nipple and he  _sucks,_ she shrieks and claws at his back, leaving welts of angry red skin in her wake.

Her hips are rocking against his, her body crying out for anything that while ease the need, the burning, gnawing, aching  _need_ deep down inside her, and she cannot remember ever feeling so  _viscerally,_ so intensely that it hurts, and this time she does not spare a thought for Trys.

He howls when her fingers finally fumble his laces open and wrap around him, throwing his head back and letting those ridiculously blue eyes shut. She works him mercilessly, tracing up and down the length of him and lower, down to the softest skin and the most sensitive spots, and he holds her up with one hand under her arse, cool against her over-heated skin, and knocks her hand aside before guiding himself closer-

He enters her so quickly, so  _forcefully,_ that it takes her breath away. She buries her face in the curve of his shoulder, her hair spilling down his white, white back like sunshine on fresh snow, and she tries desperately to muffle her cries against his skin. His fingers are bruising the thin skin of her hips, the pale golden length of her thighs, and she thinks she might die if he keeps going like this – but she  _knows_ that she'll die if he stops.

It's so good, so different and wonderful and  _new,_ with his flushed, sweat-damp skin in front of her and the blood-warm stone of the wall behind her (had he moved her away from the door? She didn't remember), the raw, animal strength of his body so different from anything she's ever experienced before in her life.

She cannot keep quiet as her orgasm rushes through her, taking her completely by surprise when he shifts his grip on her body and enters her at a different angle, hitting something that she didn't even know existed before that moment, and she can feel every muscle in her body tighten and clench as she screams, not knowing whose name she screams, clinging tighter to him.

He shouts his climax, a name that might not be hers on his lips, losing his rhythm and thrusting a handful more times before emptying into her.

He lowers her to the floor and is gone before she finds her voice. She knows that she should feel dirty, used, abused, but all she feels is  _alive,_ more alive than she has felt in too long, since Arianne started her campaign to claim Meros, since Trys died, since her life changed irrevocably with the arrival of the sweating sickness.

Allyria and Alyso find her sitting on the floor behind the door a half an hour later, smelling of Robb Stark and sex and wonder, and they exchange a knowing look when they think she can't see.

* * *

The next morning, she wakes with aches all over, and a sort of half-shameful knowledge that she hasn't hurt like this, in this way, since what she thinks was the night Meros was conceived.

Robb Stark comes to her before the morning meal, some light in those ice-blue eyes that was missing before.

"I did not mean to offend you, your highness-"

"I think you should call me Myrcella, Robb," she says lightly, smiling up at him from the seat at her dressing table. "I assume you are here to agree to the marriage, then?"

He startles slightly, but then seems to thaw under her smile and returns it with a grin.

"Come to Riverrun in three months," he says. "Tell the Dragon and Princess Arianne that they have their alliance, provided the North and the Riverlands are removed from the Seven Kingdoms."

"I have your word?"

"My word as a Stark."

She looks at him, this man who is to be her husband, and he sees the frozen North that is so much a part of him, the snow that cloaks him as it cloaks Winterfell. She wonders if he sees her as a Lannister or a Baratheon, but hopes he sees her as a Martell, as one of the family that she wishes she had been born into.

He is the furthest north, she the furthest south. Ice and fire, sand and frost, snow and sun – together, they might bring peace to Westeros. Between them, Myrcella thinks, anything is possible.


End file.
